For Facebook Advertisers Dwell Time Is The New Black

Close your eyes and imagine how you engage with Facebook. How often do you actually click on ads or content on your news feed that is not from your friends and family?

Did you know that only 8% of internet users account for 85% of clicks on display ads. That means roughly 90% of people are seeing and consuming the content but not clicking. Facebook is about the same.

Only 10% of the entire Facebook audience is what Facebook would define as “clicky.” That's right. This means that only 10% of the entire Facebook active user population is likely to click on or physically engage with the posts that ecommerce stores ( or others ) publish. 

Think about that. 90% of the people on Facebook are not going to click on your branded content. That may seem like it sucks, but… it doesn’t. 

It doesn’t mean that this group of 90% are not interested in your product post or buying/using your products. They are just engaging with it in a different way. In fact, the vast majority of people who purchase or use your products will do so without clicking on your ads. 

They may not become customers right away, but the will eventually buy if nurtured the right way. So the question then becomes: How can you as a store owner and Facebook advertiser measure and utilize the massive amount of non-clicky potential customers if they aren’t clicking on, liking, commenting on, or sharing a post? Ecommerce store owners need an effective way to access the valuable data that this 90% group represents. 

Good news.  Facebook has rolled out a new metric called “Dwell Time”. Dwell Time will equate to the total amount of time someone hovered over a post within the Newsfeed. Dwell Time includes both users who have engaged and not engaged with the content.

These people expressed some level of interested in your product , but older Facebook metrics had no way of reflecting that until now. 

In the past, the success of an ecommerce brands’ advertising efforts and content on Facebook was measured on the amount of physical engagement — how many clicks the content got, how many comments it received, how many likes it generated, etc. Dwell Time is more accurate when it comes to determining whether or not an ad or content was effective, reached its target audience, and/or had tangible business results, disregarding the number of engagements or clicks.

Facebook will be focusing more, and more on Dwell Time as a valuable metric for determining an ads success and reach as it is a more accurate measurement of the effectiveness of ads and content, which helps prove a user’s actual interest.